Journalists

Tommy Tomlinson

Tommy Tomlinson is a contributing writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. He has also written for Sports Illustrated, Forbes, Reader’s Digest, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Our State magazine, and many other publications. He spent 23 years as a reporter and local columnist for the Charlotte Observer, where he was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in commentary. His stories have been chosen twice for the “Best American Sports Writing” series (2012 and 2015) and he also appears in the anthology “America’s Best Newspaper Writing.”

He’s writing a book called The Elephant In the Room, a memoir about life as an overweight man in a growing America.

John Railey

John Railey is an editorial page editor at the Winston-Salem Journal and the author of the book Rage to Redemption in the Sterilization Age: A Confrontation with American Genocide. He has been a tireless advocate for eugenic sterilization victims since his distinguished work on the “Against Their Will” series in 2002.

Jim Morrill

Jim Morrill covers politics at the Charlotte Observer, where he has been since 1981. @jimmorrill

Ann Doss Helms

Ann Doss Helms has been a reporter at the Charlotte Observer for over 28 years. She specializes in K-12 education, health care, and social justice. @anndosshelms

Kevin Begos

Kevin Begos is now a freelance reporter who specializes in writing about science, food, and the environment. He was a member of the Winston-Salem Journal team that published the award-winning Against Their Will series in 2002, and later became a Correspondent for the Associated Press. He is a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.